Maurizio Zanfanti, Legendary Playboy Who Claimed He Slept With 6,000 Women, Dies While Having Sex

The Italian nightclub promoter became a legend for his romantic exploits across Europe.

The Italian nightclub promoter became a legend for his romantic exploits across Europe.

It could be said that Maurizio Zanfanti died doing what he loved: a young woman.

The 63-year-old Italian man, who claimed that he slept with more than 6,000 women through his work as a nightclub promoter, died this week in Romania while reportedly having sex with a 23-year-old tourist in the back of a car. As the New York Post reported, the young woman in the car with Zanfanti called police after he suffered the heart attack, but paramedics could not revive the man.

It was not entirely clear when during the act Zanfanti suffered the heart attack. The Mirror noted that the two were finished and the woman was putting her clothes back on when she noticed the 63-year-old man in medical distress.

His death was mourned by local officials, and likely a number of women. A local newspaper called Il Resto Del Carlino said that “Zanza died after doing what he did best — loving women,” while another referred to him as a “legend.”

As the New York Post noted, Zanfanti first gained fame in 1972 when he began working as a promoter for a nightclub, where he was tasked with enticing tourists to come inside. His good looks made the job easy, and also made him irresistible to women. Zanfanti claimed that he could sleep with up to 200 women each summer promoting the nightclubs, and in the winters would travel to Scandinavia to work for tourism agencies.

In doing so, he gained even more fame for his womanizing ways.

“His exploits became so famous that some of his lovers erected a wax statue of him in a Swedish town,” the New York Post report noted.

In all, Zanfanti estimated that he slept with more than 6,000 women through the course of his adult life. Given that he started working as a nightclub promoter at age 17 and died at age 63, Zanfanti would have needed to have sex with a woman every 2.8 days for more than four decades to achieve that rate.

Reports noted that Zanfanti remained so popular among his partners, some of the women he slept with would hold “reunions” and the nightclub help parties in his honor.

But along the way, Zanfanti seemed to grow tired of the relentless partying, and said in a 2014 interview that he was “getting too old for it.” Apparently he felt young enough to have one more go of it this week, and with a woman nearly one-third of his age.